Roof - bought house - advice on wrong pitch and who is responsible

stuart45

Double felting can help with a low pitch. An inverted dormer might look wrong on this one.

alleycat`

Part of our extension had to have a specific tile due to the pitch (as others have said).

It was actually specified in the plans and was, as it looks like in this case, caused by the window above restricting the pitch angle.

Section62

shefmarkh said:

The leaking roof is the one above the left hand room at front.

I'd get an architect to advise you.

My gut feel is the best approach would be a semi-inverted dormer to allow the pitch of the extension to better match the pitch of the porch.  Assuming the porch roof is correctly pitched for the tile, this approach would have the combined effect of sorting the pitch issue as well as creating a more aesthetically pleasing frontage.  There are possible techinical problems with doing that (e.g. planning, and the need to raise the side wall) but you'd likely end up with a better overall result than you would from converting to flat roof, or a non-matching tile.

It looks like the 2nd floor window in the extension is taller than the other windows, which exacerbates the problem with the roof pitch.  A wider but less tall window would have given the same area of glass without constraining the roof so much.  I'd guess someone decided to buy a standard-size window for economy purposes, rather than designing the window opening to look right and work better.

Also, does the roof of the 2-storey part of the extension have a valley gutter with the original house?  If so, you may want that checked by a surveyor to make sure it has been done properly.  And get that fixed at the same time if it isn't.

Finally, I'd want to be sure the front wall of the 2-storey extension was properly supported by either a wall below, or a suitable beam.  There's a lot of load there.

[Deleted User]

Crest low pitch tiles, quite pretty, easy to work with and go down to 10 degrees
G10 Flat Clay Roofing Tile Roofing Tiles (crest-bst.co.uk)

alleycat`

Section62 said:

shefmarkh said:

The leaking roof is the one above the left hand room at front.

It looks like the 2nd floor window in the extension is taller than the other windows, which exacerbates the problem with the roof pitch.  A wider but less tall window would have given the same area of glass without constraining the roof so much.  I'd guess someone decided to buy a standard-size window for economy purposes, rather than designing the window opening to look right and work better.

Good catch on the window.

It reminds me ours was modified as part of the overall design for this very reason.

casper_gutman

Same here - the window halfway up our stairs was moved two feet up the wall to get the pitch of the side extension roof right.

knightstyle

In a similar situation the extension was roofed using metal sheets which were profiled to look like tiles and could be used with a 10degree pitch.
Like these...  https://www.roofingmegastore.co.uk/corotile-lightweight-metal-roofing-sheet.html